Topic

After 30 years, I was keen to have another look at this little gem in North Wales.
There was a good turn out for what is described as a hard work trip.
Ellie led us to near the cave, we then had a bit of faff finding the entrance.
This was rigged for SRT (as we had harnesses for the later pitches, I saw no need to add a ladder to the kit list).
We then had a bit of faff before setting off on the obvious route. After a short crawl we came to a climb down and some easy walking.
Turning right at the first junction took us to Funnel Chamber which was the wrong way, so we back tracked and continued into the sandy crawls. Some of the crawls were a little snug.
We then had a climb with SRT alternative. This did not have an in-situ rope when I last did it.
This was followed by the canal. The water level was much lower than I remembered.
Eventually we came to the 80' pitch. This seemed to go on much longer than I remembered with several rebelays. It was followed by some muddy slopes and more pitches that I did not remember.
We turned round at a rope which led into a pit before ascending back to a higher level.
Now thoroughly caked in mud, our jammers were not working as well as they might. Several team members said their hand jammer was slipping. I only heard one complaint of both jammers slipping!
We headed straight out with little faff. Fran tried to wash off some of the mud in the river.
We had failed to find the sump but were not far away from it. The area below the 80' pitch does not fit with my memory of the cave or with Ros' cave log.
Anyway, a muddy time was had by all.

Team: Charlotte, Ellie, Fran, Ade, Alex, Matt, Phil, Rich & Dave
Time: 5 hours